A renowned Russian composer, educator and music theoretician, Alfred Schnittke was one of the most remarkable musicians of the second part of the 20th Century and the main representative of the “Soviet musical avant-garde” along with Edison Denisov and Sofia Gubaydulina. The first encounter of the future composer with the art of music occurred in 1946 in Vienna. His father was sent to work in Austria as a journalist and interpreter and he took his whole family with him. Alfred Schnittke attended numerous concerts, listened to Beethoven, Schubert and Bruckner and saw operas by Mozart, Leoncavallo, Mascagni, and Wagner. When he was twelve, his parents decided he should be given his first music lessons. After the family returned to Moscow in 1948 Alfred auditioned for the October Revolution Music College, and subsequently studied there from 1949 to 1953. From 1953 until 1958 Schnittke studied composition with Evgeny Golubev and orchestration with Nicolay Rakov at the Moscow Conservatory. His final student work, an oratorio entitled Nagasaki, was criticized by the Union of Soviet Composers for “modernism”. Dmitry Shostakovich wrote in support of Nagasaki, and it was recorded for radio transmission abroad, but not within the USSR. By this time Schnittke’s individuality as a composer had taken its form. His style combined various composers’ techniques according to the concept of “poly-stylistics”, which he introduced himself. Schnittke proposed to “step over the most rooted conventionality, which is an understanding of a style as a sterile clean phenomenon.” He played with styles and liked stylistic allusions, which, along with quotation, were his main principles of work. Critics praised his talent and free command of various genres. Schnittke composed three operas, three ballets, nine symphonies, six concerti grossi, four violin concertos, two cello concertos, concertos for piano and a triple concerto for violin, viola and cello, as well as four string quartets and a variety of chamber music. The composer also worked often in theater and cinema. His soundtracks can be heard in many Soviet movies, cartoons and documentaries. By 1984 he had scored more than 60 movies, among them, “Belorussky Vokzal” (1970), “The Hot Snow” (1972), “Skazka Stranstviy” (1982), “You and Me” (1971) and “Ascension” (1976). In June 1985, while Schnittke was at the Soviet resort of Pitsunda, he was hospitalized with a stroke. Three times he was said to be clinically dead, but he recovered. Shostakovich once said: “Even if my arms are cut, I will write music anyway, holding a pen in my teeth.” Schnittke had the same persistence. Doctors created a special device that let Schnittke record the tones and notes he thought up, and the records were arranged into scores by specialists. Thus Schnittke wrote his 9th Symphony, dedicated to Gennady Rozhdestvensky. There is a belief in the musical world that 9th symphonies bear a curse for their creators. Ninth symphonies were the last written by Beethoven, Brukner, and Mahler (he was working on his tenth symphony when he died), and the 9th Symphony was to be the last for Schnittke. In the early summer of 1998, Schnittke suffered his third stroke and August 3rd he died in Hamburg.